In a Party Filled With Cowards, Cruz Stood Apart

Republican delegates booed when he told them to vote their conscience.

Say what you will about Ted Cruz's politics or personality, but it takes a special kind of chutzpah to stand up at a convention—in front of millions of viewers—and unfurl a comprehensive attack on the party's nominee. It's also unprecedented. On Wednesday night, Cruz gave a commanding and inclusive speech about conservative values. It was so good that the crowd forgot to boo until he was more than halfway finished.

"Stand and speak, and vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom… (so that) we will be able to say, 'Freedom matters, and I was part of something beautiful.'"

All these words were broadsides against Donald Trump's candidacy. By the end, the crowd tried to drown him out with boos and pro-Trump chants. Cruz's wife had to be escorted out of the convention center because a mob of Trump fans was threatening her. A man in a donor suite had to be restrained when Cruz walked by. They didn't want something beautiful at the Republican National Convention; they wanted something angry.

When Trump first ran for president, he claimed that the Republican Party was nothing but a bunch of spineless weasels who didn't have the mettle to fight. Trump then won the nomination, and most of the Republican establishment proved his contention true by backing a candidate whose worldview directly conflicted with their own stated beliefs.

There were those, such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, who reluctantly offered unconvincing endorsements to avert a civil war. Let's just say this is the sort of risk aversion that falls well within the normal parameters of politically expedient behavior—the kind we all supposedly hate.

Then there were those who had no shame. Example: Then-candidate Rick Perry once gave a speech titled "Defending Conservatism Against the Cancer of Trump-ism." Cancer. Now, if you want to read the text of his speech, you won't be able to find it on Perry's website. It's been removed. And the man who once said Trump-ism is "a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued" was soon angling for the veep spot and promised that he would help Trump in "myriad ways."

Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan and Scott Walker were the people who would supposedly synthesize conservative ideals and then offer a compelling, modern, principled, political case. All of them were, at various times, harshly critical of Trump. But all of them eventually fell in line. Trump fans are never going to warm to these "elitists," no matter how helpful they are this year. And after Cruz's speech, all of them look weak.

Cruz, who we shouldn't forget tried to be buddies with Trump for most of last year, ended up in a different place. Now, I should note that if someone smeared my wife and accused my father of being complicit in the murder of a president, I wouldn't merely refuse to endorse that person; I would have a new favorite enemy. I'm sensitive like that. So I can imagine Cruz's speech had something to do with this history. He's human, after all.

It also says something about Trump's judgment that he invited a politician whom he'd cruelly attacked to speak at the convention—in a prime-time spot. "This man is a pathological liar," Cruz spat out not that long ago. "He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth… The man is utterly amoral." Even if you believe that the Trump camp set Cruz up to be booed (a story I'm highly skeptical about), he created a needlessly divisive situation that could have easily backfired.

It couldn't have only been vengeance. Cruz hasn't really wavered on his political positions—whether you like them or not. What shouldn't be lost in the kerfuffle is that the speech he gave was a well-delivered distillation of conservative ideas that went well beyond the strikes on Trump. In contrast with what's been going on, it sounded inclusive.

Cruz also made a strong case for religious liberty—for Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists—and for federalism. All that talk about the Constitution offended Trump's fans because they know well that the candidate has little, if any, interest in preserving the document. The phrase "vote your conscience" provoked boos from the GOP nominee's fans.

The same day Cruz angered Trump supporters by not honoring a silly political pledge to endorse the GOP nominee, Trump was quoted in a New York Times interview praising another authoritarian and asserting that he would ignore international treaties signed by the United States.

So though it takes guts to pull off what Cruz did, there wasn't much downside politically. It seems unlikely that a Trump victory would mean an end to Cruz's Senate career. If 2016 ends up being a disaster for his party—and it's a good bet it will—Cruz will be the only major Republican to emerge from the Trump fiasco with his principles largely intact. Maybe, as his critics claim, he's just laying the groundwork for 2020. Maybe it will backfire. Maybe only someone as stubborn and egotistical as Cruz could do it. So what?

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What, no hysterical accusations about how this article proves that Reason is a secret front for the Clinton Foundation, terrorists and mexicans who want to stop Herr Drumpf from making america great again? Is the website broken or something?

I kinda like the lack of an edit button. It keeps people from going back and doing what Rick Perry did (mentioned in the article above: scrubbing past statements). That is a valuable tool in fighting weaselly-type trolls who will edit past trolling and pretend not to have written it.

The only thing I don’t like about not having an edit button is the inability to correct spelling. But that could be solved without adding an edit button but giving us a spell-checker and a preview-before-posting window.

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This is what puzzles me about the #AlwaysCucks. They lost this time around to Trump. But Trump is 70. Could lose to Hillary. Could lose in 2020. And there’s no clear successors in the pipeline. He who fights and doesn’t burn all his bridges can live to fight another day.

But instead of just sucking it up and saying “ok, we lost this time, but we’re part of a team, and we’re still going to pull to win”, while planning to win next time, it’s “fuck you and your little dog too” to half the party – the winning half. There’s some genius political strategy for you.

You think that the half betrayed by the Cucks would *ever* vote for one of these betraying Cucks? Cruz just committed political suicide, but if he is anything like Harsanyi, he doesn’t even realize it. Cruz probably think’s he’s in line for 2020 if Trump loses, even after publicly betraying all the Trump voters. What a putz.

Much like Progressives, the #AlwaysCucks feel they are entitled to rule, but unlike Progressives, they seem incapable of counting votes.

Yep. It’s astounding how short-sighted the RNC and other “party unity” Trump supporters are being. They’re so afraid of pissing off the Trump supporters that they’re willing to destroy the party in a year when the Democrats are historically demoralized.

After the RNC’s rigging votes and other hijinx at the convention to protect Trump from the #NeverTrump hordes, they fucking OWN the Trump nomination now. If he loses the election (which isn’t much of an if) the RNC needs to be fired from top to bottom. Chairman Reince has gotten loads of credit for the Senate wins in 2014 (which had everything to do with disgust at Obama, not clever leadership by the RNC) but if he’s still chairman in December, there’s not going to be a GOP worth going back to.

And that’s the point that everyone bitching about Trump misses. There’s no other “legitimate” candidate out there to replace him in the GOP *because Trump won the primary*. The GOP replaces him, it’s an automatic loss. The voters were voting against the party leadership, not necessarily for Trump, and they’re damn sure not going to back the leaders’ preferred candidate once the leaders told them their votes were irrelevant.

As for Cruz, I agree with others that he ended his career. He could have just done what Reagan did with Ford…sucked it up and preached party unity for the election. But he didn’t…he undercut the party and the candidate and then got petulant about it. Nobody nominates the pissy little crybaby the next time around after he screws over the party he’s a member of. They especially don’t do it when they already found him pretty distasteful.

Well, the Trump voter is really a good chunk of the GOP base that got fed up with being betrayed by twats like Boehner and McConnell who failed to provide any meaningful opposition to Obama and the Democrats and instead preferred to keep doing business as usual. So if they plan on winning in the future, they had best get used to the idea of courting them. Of course, they aren’t known as the Stupid Party for nothing.

Yup. And I get the appeal…the voters were sick of watching weak, milquetoast GOP candidates who were too apologetic to even put up a fight. Trump’s views are nonsensical gibberish, but he does fight back…that’s more than you could say about most of the candidates in the GOP primary this year.

“Trump’s views are nonsensical gibberish, but he does fight back…that’s more than you could say about most of the candidates in the GOP primary this year.”

Yes, but he’s nominated for President, not King of the Schoolyard. What his nomination says to me is that the largest block of Republican voters doesn’t care about the Constitution or the rule of law. Since I also think most Democratic voters don’t either, we seem to be in a pickle.

Yup. And I get the appeal…the voters were sick of watching weak, milquetoast GOP candidates who were too apologetic to even put up a fight. Trump’s views are nonsensical gibberish, but he does fight back…that’s more than you could say about most of the candidates in the GOP primary this year.

See? It’s the leveraging power of spoiler votes. So tell me… what percentage of the popular vote did the Tea-totalitarian antichoice prohibitionists get in 2014 that upset the PO Pee soft machine’s applecarts?

The use of “cuck” is always my first indication that someone is a Trumptard. There are so many other useful words, that to buy into the verbiage of neanderthals tells me that you are a fucking idiot. Full stop.

I stopped reading at “cuck”. The libertarian ‘jock sniffers”, as Matt put it on his podcast yesterday, who genuinely support Trump’s presidency have gone all in, language and everything. I can understand hating Hilary THAT MUCH that you’ll drink the Bulleit and promote him. But genuinely supporting Trump to the point of adopting the lingo is delusion.

On the other hand, I somewhat appreciate Jay Nordlinger’s “Cucks4Lyfe” ownership of the term. I mean, in a way, the RNC did cheat on a lot of people with the ugliest lying pile of shit on the political stage. But as always, it says far more about the cheater.

Good point. Before the Liberal Party injected the Dems with courage to back repeal, anarchist meant communist and liberal meant gelded libertarian. After Herb Hoover’s defeat the GO Pee began using liberal the way Hitler did in Mein Kampf. So I watch for liberal with a nazi accent, the -tard suffix (nationalsocialist propaganda movies were as full of pinheads as a papal village with a Zika epidemic). Personality cultists are also invariably collectivists.

You assume that this fight is personal. The #NeverTrump crowd is largely driven by principled conservative policy stances, and Trump has so far shown that he will remain on the opposite side of those policy stances.

Trump supporters don’t seem to believe it’s possible to follow principles, so they project their “it must be personal” beliefs onto Cruz supporters. All this ends up doing is showing the #NeverTrump crowd that there is an even wider gap between the Trump and #NeverTrump camps and cements their opposition.

I’m old fashioned and take things like oaths and pledges very seriously. It’s really bad magic to break one. But these guys are all so casual about it. “Hey. I lied. I’m a politician, what did you expect?”

I agree, even if it was half-assed and qualified, Cruz should have fulfilled his promise.

Trump said he would renege on the same pledge after Cruz won Wisconsin, because he said he’d been treated unfairly.

If you condemn Cruz for breaking the pledge, you must condemn Trump too.

The loyalty pledge was a stupid idea from the beginning, because Trump was never going to allow himself to be bound by it (ask his creditors about how good he is at keeping his word). The RNC essentially forced their candidates to promise to support Trump or else lose access to party resources. Mark that up as another idiot move by Chairman Reince.

The loyalty pledge was an RNC idea, not the other candidates. I agree that the RNC thought it was being smart, despite any non-retarded five year old being able to guess that Trump would break the pledge, and wound up stuck in their own trap.

Add to that that it was enforced by conditioning access to RNC donor lists, polling info, etc on signing the pledge. Those are the sorts of things that serious politicians need, not Donald Trump. You can’t overstate how stupid the RNC was.

When pro-life-after-death burning Cruz says conscience in the sentence after KKKonstitution he clearly meant vote for the antichoice prohibitionist Consta-to-shun Party? a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Prohibition Party?. In their platform the 14th Amendment is rewritten to read: All ova fertilized…

I agree, even if it was half-assed and qualified, Cruz should have fulfilled his promise.

It was a pledge, not a suicide pact. If the GOP had resurrected Hitler and nominated him, would you be on here bitching about the loyalty pledges the candidates made? No(no?), which means that you believe there is a line to where that pledge should be honored as well.

Instead of being a moralistic pedant and saying “Ted made the pledge, he should keep it” let’s have the REAL conversation of “Is the line Ted drew appropriate?”

I take them seriously also, but sometimes there are intervening factors in mitigation. A rough chronology if I recall correctly:

1. Ted Cruz pledges to support whoever the nominee is;

2. Trump continues to call Cruz a liar, accuses his father of being involved in assassinating Kennedy, and says Cruz’s wife is ugly and insane.

3. Now, people criticize Cruz for breaking the pledge. WTF?

I’m reminded, speaking of taking oaths (and truth-telling generally) seriously, which I do also, a nun I knew when discussing morality and lying, mentioned how when she was in a particular South American country decades ago where the police made people disappear (often with torture and if female rape first), and the police came to the house where she was living to ask about whether a particular person was there, she lied, and would do so again. She believed it was consistent with her duty to God and humanity, in that set of circumstances, to lie.

1. Trump and Cruz both told A. Cooper non-endorsement guaranty 2. Trump specifically said he did not want or need Cruz endorsement 3. Who the fuck endorses the guy who disparages his wife and suggests his father helped kill Kennedy?

The only thing better, in my book, that Cruz could have done would be to have whipped it out and pissed all over the stage too.

Cruz decided his principles were more important then honoring a pledge everyone thought was stupid. Cruz basically took his future with the republican party and tossed it in the firs so he could shit the party. When did we stop loving it when people shit on the republican party?

I believe this only made Trump look like the bigger man, willing to give time to his biggest rival (other than Hillary, of course) on his own stage. It completely undercut the argument of those delegates who are bitching about how the convention voting happened.

It also says something about Trump’s judgment that he invited a politician whom he’d cruelly attacked to speak at the convention?in a prime-time spot. … Even if you believe that the Trump camp set Cruz up to be booed (a story I’m highly skeptical about), he created a needlessly divisive situation that could have easily backfired.

What this says about Trump is that he can be magnanimous in victory to those who he has beaten, but if you fuck him, he’ll fuck you twice as hard. All in all, pretty good game theory.

Trump couldn’t lose.

If Cruz comes around, it helps unite the convention around Trump. If Cruz is a prick, the convention unites against Cruz and for Trump. Either way, Trump gets what he wants, and shows himself as a magnanimous winner.

“There was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer, which does have credibility,” Trump said to a room of volunteers and staffers in Cleveland, adding that the tabloid “should be very respected.”

He thinks there’s credibility that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination because it was on the front page of the *National Enquirer*?!!!!

Good point. Are we 100% sure the speech Cruz gave, was the same speech that was reviewed by Trump or his people? Unless Ted Cruz is as egomaniacal as Trump I don’t understand why he would take the time to shit all over the republican presidential nominee.

In a Party Filled With Cowards, Cruz Stood Apart Republican delegates booed when he told them to vote their conscience.

The delusional psychodrama of the #AlwaysCucks is a wonder to behold.

In their own mind, they’re Conservative Justice Warriors, fighting for “principle”.

In anyone else’s mind, they’re sore losers actively trying to scuttle the Party’s chances when they didn’t have the votes to get their way. What a bunch of entitled children.

If you had a conscience, you wouldn’t pretend to be part of a party, then seek to sabotage it when you don’t get your way. What’s so principled about “Let’s vote to see who we pick to lead the party, but if I don’t get my way, I’ll do my best to screw you and your little dog too”?

The same day Cruz angered Trump supporters by not honoring a silly political pledge to endorse the GOP nominee

Few things say “principled and courageous” quite like punking out on a pledge.

So though it takes guts to pull off what Cruz did, there wasn’t much downside politically.

It took an invincible and delusional sense of entitlement and smug self righteousness. Cruz is toast politically. Most of the party already hated him, and now he’s betrayed half of the Republican voters. He never wins an election again.

All that’s left is for him to pick out his office at National Review with the rest of #AlwaysCucks.

Baloney! Cruz is far from finished politically. Odds are Trump loses spectacularly in November and then Cruz is the prescient one who will rally the opposition to President Hillary in the Senate. Nobody will remember the”betrayal.” And if Trump should happen to win, his presidency will be a disaster, again setting Cruz up as the defender of conservative values. About the only way Cruz loses is if a Trump presidency (or a Pence presidency after Trump resigns) is wildly popular. Suffice to say, I find the likelihood of that vanishingly small…

Sure, there’s no way all the millions of Trump Republicans blame Cruz for participating in Trump’s loss and giving us President Hillary because he failed to liver up to his promise and unify the party against Hillary. That seems a sure path to victory for Cruz, alright.

It’s strange to just assume the Trump presidency will be a disaster. Trump will be fantastic at fulfilling what has become the actual main duty of the President, which is to be the King of America. When the President gets involved in the actual nitty-gritty of the policymaking process, American voters tend to see it as beneath the office. Trump won’t bother to stoop that low! He’ll shop out the actual work of managing the government to others and gladly take on the ceremonial duties of flying around with a thousand security officers and making serious faces when his military advisers are handling a crisis somewhere.

Just remember that Texas picked Cruz in the primaries, and there’s a lot of people still behind him in his state. He may have encountered a lot of “But TEAM!!!!” outrage in his state’s delegation at the convention, but I’m sure he’ll recover from that by 2018 when he’s up for re-election. I don’t see him going anywhere soon.

This kind of assholish rhetoric by Trump supporters is exactly why he’s never going to win. Who the hell wants to be a part of a cult that uses terms like “cuck” on a regular basis? Cruz is going to be just fine. He won Texas handily in the primaries and will handily win reelection. The only people he pissed off were Trump’s idiot worshippers. That faction’s influence will have greatly waned next time Cruz runs for president. I have major issues with Cruz, but he’s got a long career ahead of him.

It’s a good business decision. The pay-off could be massive, there’s no one else who did it, so he can reap it alone. And the risks seem rather limited. Courage? Well, it immediately provokes some negative reactions, and concealed positive ones. One shouldn’t ignore, that doing it is amusing (for someone in the place of Cruz): a matter of defiant satisfaction, and entertaining giving the elements of the absurd.

Cruz has always been an attention whore. That’s his motivation for doing this. Look at the difference in attention that he’s getting compared to the other convention speakers.

He’s shown himself willing to take severe criticism and political consequences if it means he gets attention. Look at the time he tried to force a roll call vote in the Senate and not a single Senator (even among his TP allies) was willing to second the motion because he was such a douche about it. Note that I did not say “if he advances his cause” because he usually doesn’t actually accomplish anything, other than getting attention for himself.

That probably kept him from endorsing Trump, but the need to get attention was the main driver for giving that speech. If he wanted to merely refuse to endorse Trump, he could have stayed away from the convention like loads of other GOP did.

What I noticed about Cruz’s speech (other than breaking his pledge and proving Trump right with the whole “Lyin’ Ted” thing), is that is was all about Cruz.

So they nominated a flawed candidate – throwing a temper-tantrum at the convention won’t change that. Sabotaging Trump gets an even worse candidate elected in November.

How about rallying the party to get conservatives elected to Congress? Maybe laying out some legislation that actually does ” defend our freedom” and claws back legislative authority from the regulators, President, and courts? Cruz is a Senator, right? Isn’t that supposed to be his job? Not just kicking off his 2020 campaign..

I voted for Cruz in the primary (I had thought about writing in Rand Paul). Won’t happen again.

The thing I noticed was that Cruz talked about freedom and the Constitution, topics that, until he took the stage, were absent from the convention of the party that supposedly is all about freedom and the Constitution.

So, did Ted Cruz’s father actually have something to do with the JFK assassination?

Because Don Trump carried that story over multiple days, and if there is no evidence that the story is true, then Trump is a looney, and I prefer not to vote for a looney, unless he displays some sort of libertarian-ish bent, which is not in evidence with Trump.

It says something about the candidate whose paper of choice is the National Enquirer. Of course, Donald’s good friend is David Pecker (insert masturbation joke here), the owner of this rag, so it sleazes for Trump when he needs it.

Trump knew before Cruz’s speech that he wasn’t going to endorse him so this is a non issue. Trump had policy of scorched earth during the primaries so are his supporters being realistic when things aren’t all candy canes and lollypops during his coronation at the RNC. I’m no big fan of Cruz, but you reap what you sow.

“The same day Cruz angered Trump supporters by not honoring a silly political pledge to endorse the GOP nominee,”

If it was a silly pledge he shouldn’t have made it.

The only defense I can think of is by analogy with contract law – Trump joined the pledge then said he wouldn’t keep it if he lost – so a breach by another party relieves other parties of their obligations.

Unless we accept this view of things, we’re just blowing off a violation of one’s pledges.

Journalists like to be all “oh, we’re men of the world, we all understand that these pledges don’t mean anything.”

Then they bemoan the cynicism of voters when they don’t take politicians seriously or care what they say.

“The only defense I can think of is by analogy with contract law – Trump joined the pledge then said he wouldn’t keep it if he lost – so a breach by another party relieves other parties of their obligations.”

This is sort of what happened; in addition, Trump said he neither needed nor wanted Cruz’s endorsement.

Another defense would be that the one you promised to endorse subsequently turned out to be a looney (or worse), in which case the only sensible and honorable thing to do would be to rescind the promised endorsement.

“Trump invited Cruz to speak at the convention knowing full well that Cruz was not going to endorse him. Cruz told him and Trump agreed.

“Cruz’s speech was embargoed so the the Trump campaign and the media knew Cruz would not endorse Trump.

“Trump himself threw out the pledge of support on March 29 during an interview with Anderson Cooper, saying he didn’t want Cruz’s endorsement.

I would add that you insult my wife’s appearance, accuse me of having multiple affairs and otherwise assail my moral character, and accuse my dad of playing a role in the assassination of a president, don’t expect an endorsement. But this is beside the point.

This idea that politics is a team sport makes no sense to me, and seems especially strange when espoused on a website devoted to the political philosophy of libertarianism, not the Republican party.

Cruz has been pretty consistent – he is dedicated to certain principles, and acts accordingly, whether in the senate or at the GOP convention. It seems silly to complain that he’s not abandoning his principles to support the team when he’s been fairly consistent in this behavior all along. To hear the GOP establishment (which was vehemently opposed to Trump during the primaries) complaining that Cruz is not supporting the team simply highlights their opportunism and lack of principle.

I’m not so na?ve as to think that Cruz acts without regard for how the electorate will view his actions. Clearly he believes that not endorsing Trump, and acting as the standard bearer for the #NeverTrump element of the party, is his best strategy in the long run. He may be wrong, but he does not strike me as a stupid man. His actions may cost him future votes of those who support the party, regardless of principle, but I suspect not.

Cruz calculates that “movement conservatives” (and maybe even libertarians) who value principle over party will support him in the future. If Republican pragmatists think they need those principled voters to win, they’ll probably change their tune and support Cruz. Isn’t that consistent with their view that victory is more important than principle?

Cruz is exactly as courageous and principled as the Saudis who flew someone else’s planes into the World Trade Center. Antichoice mystical prohibitionists are as collectivist as Stalin’s International Socialists and Hitler’s National Socialists ever aspired to be.

I still don’t understand why conventions became staged coronation events. Why not let all the various party factions speak and have their moment in the spotlight? Why pretend Ron Paul wasn’t a grass roots phenomenon last time? What’s wrong with a contested final vote? Show that your party has its disagreements, but everyone is heard and this is who we’re going with. And if you don’t plan to endorse the party’s nominee, don’t pledge in advance that you will.

Seeing different viewpoints and some drama makes for better TV anyway.

So Cruz gave a pledge to endorse whomever got the nomination, then the person who ended up receiving the nomination called his wife names and said his father assassinated a former President.

Sorry, this is one time that I’ll give a pass. Trumps attacks went beyond policy disagreements and inter-party fighting. They went into the bizarre and personal to an extent most of us have probably never seen in our lifetime. It was absurd.

Cruz was second to Trump this time around, and with this he sealed the deal for his run in 4 years. If you think Trump isn’t going to crash and burn whether he gets elected or not, you’re out of your mind and Cruz is banking on that.

Cruz is specifically banking on Trump either winning and being terrible in real life, or losing to a woman everyone on his side considers impossible to lose to thus proving he was a bad pick. That seems like the safest bet one could make. I’m honestly not sure if Cruz did this for personal integrity/revenge reasons, or if it’s a political gambit, but really it doesn’t matter since it’s probably both. In other words, the easiest play one could make. There are zero downsides for him, and he was a Tea Party candidate anyway therefore more likely to not go along to get along with the Devil in the GOP.

No but I don’t recall anyone accusing Nancy Reagan of being ugly nor saying that Ronnie’s father was an assassin. Ford was a prick I guess but how far back are we going here? Please, tell me which election had one of the two major candidates accusing the others parent of being a Presidential Assassin? Maybe I missed it, it’s possible.

Yes, but did G.W. Bush himself say any of those things? It is indeed bad that G.W. Bush probably didn’t denounce any of those things, but it’s a whole other matter for the candidate himself to say such things…and even defend having said them:

“There was a picture on the front page of the National Enquirer, which does have credibility,” Trump said to a room of volunteers and staffers in Cleveland, adding that the tabloid “should be very respected.”

It would be if the “vote your conscience” hadn’t already been a catch-phrase associated with the NeverTrump-ers.

It was a dog-whistle and the audience knew it immediately.

there are reports that Cruz showed his speech to Trump’s manager before hand, but then that manager encouraged the boos. I suspect that Cruz deviated from his speech in significant ways which brought about the booing. Cruz is callously setting himself up for the aftermath of a Trump crash-and-burn. It’s this kind of petty self-serving crap that folks hate in career-politicians and a huge reason why Trump is winning.

But what else to you call it when someone surreptiously indicates that they are on the side of a portion of the audience, while simultaneously acting like they are on the side of another portion of the audience?

It was a *wink wink nudge nudge* to the #nevertrumpers and the audience knew it immediately. Is that better for you? Personally I think “dog-whistle” is a more succinct way of getting the point across, but if you can’t handle anyone using that in an argument…well, then, fuck off phrasing Nazi.

“but it takes a special kind of chutzpah to stand up at a convention?in front of millions of viewers” and break your word/pledge. Does anyone, anywhere care about the ethics of those they support? Does any pol these days keep their word? Is there any integrity in DC or NYC? If there is, I haven’t seen it for a very long time. And those that support such liars/schemers/whores are just as bad as those they support. I am back to where I started. HRC, NFW. DT, NFW. GJ, NFW. Green whoever, NFW. Maybe I’ll protest by staying home in November.

A speech on core values was something sorely needed at the personality cult convention that this was and Ted Cruz delivered. It’s a pretty sad day when one can’t talk about core values without being attacked for having done so.

Donald Trump is asking us to trust him to use big government to fix all of our problems for us. That brings to mind the following in President Reagan’s acceptance speech at the 1980 Republican National Convention:

“‘Trust me’ government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. But my view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties.”

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Thank God for this article! It is so good to hear a defense of Mr. Cruz, who was, indeed, both brave and true to his own principles and convictions. The appalling thing is that what was booed were his words “Vote your conscience”, and “Vote for candidates who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.” Does this say that Trump’s followers recognize him (Trump) as NOT fitting that description? Ted Cruz has NO obligation to endorse Trump. The type of pledge asked of the candidates is not binding; in fact, MAY not be honored in violation of one’s conscience. We also seem to forget that when, back in March, the candidates were asked about that pledge, Donald Trump was the ONE who refused, claiming that the Republican Party wasn’t being “fair” to him! Ted Cruz’s speech was a ringing call to the right kind of conservatism and Americanism. If only we would listen!

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